Historical Supreme Court Oral Arguments

The OYEZ Project site has updated its patent content significantly over the past few months. The oral arguments from most of the historical patent cases on the site are now available.

Listen to the Marshal of the Supreme Court open court proceedings here: [Link]. Please consider supporting the OYEZ project: [here].

I’ve recently been listening to the oral argument from the 1961 case of Aro Mfg. Co. v. Convertible Top Co. (Aro I) where the Court took exception to a “heart of the invention” analysis. You can listen to the Aro I oral arguments here: [Part I], [Part 2].

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For if anything is settled in the patent law, it is that the combination patent covers only the totality of the elements in the claim, and that no element, separately viewed, is within the grant. See the Mercoid cases, supra, 320 U.S. at 320 U. S. 667; 320 U.S. at 320 U. S. 684. [Footnote 10] The basic fallacy in respondent’s position is that it requires the ascribing to one element of the patented combination the status of patented invention in itself. Yet this Court has made it clear in the twoMercoid cases that there is no legally recognizable or protected “essential” element, “gist” or “heart” of the invention in a combination patent. In Mercoid Corp. v. Mid-Continent Co., supra, the Court said:

“That result may not be obviated in the present case by calling the combustion stoker switch the ‘heart of the invention’ or the ‘advance in the art.’ The patent is for a combination only. Since none of the separate elements of the combination is claimed as the invention, none of them, when dealt with separately, is protected by the patent monopoly.”

“The fact that an unpatented part of a combination patent may distinguish the invention does not draw to it the privileges of a patent. That may be done only in the manner provided by law. However worthy it may be, however essential to the patent, an unpatented part of a combination patent is no more entitled to monopolistic protection than any other unpatented device.”